Nuclear Risk Analysis In Comparative Perspective

The Social Contours of RiskVolume I: Publics, Risk Communication and the Social Amplification of RiskWe live in a 'risk society' where the identification, distribution and management of risks, from new technology, environmental factors or other sources are crucial to our individual and social existence. In The Social Contours of Risk, Volumes I and II, two of the world's leading and most influential analysts of the social dimensions of risk bring together their most important contributions to this fundamental and wide-ranging field.Volume I collects their fundamental work on how risks are communicated among different publics and stakeholders, including local communities, corporations and the larger society. It analyses the problems of lack of transparency and trust, and explores how even minor effects can be amplified and distorted through media and social responses, preventing effective management. The final section investigates the difficult ethical issues raised by the unequal distribution of risk depending on factors such as wealth, location and genetic inheritance - with examples from worker and public protection, facility-siting conflicts, transporting hazardous waste and widespread impacts such as climate change.

We live in a 'risk society' where the identification, distribution and management of risks, from new technology, environmental factors or other sources are crucial to our individual and social existence. In The Social Contours of Risk, Volumes I and II, two of the world's leading and most influential analysts of the social dimensions of risk bring together their most important contributions to this fundamental and wide-ranging field. Volume II centres on the analysis and management of risk in society, in international business and multinationals, and globally. The 'acceptability' of risk to an individual depends on the context, whether the larger society or in, for example, a corporate framework. Their work clarifies the structures and processes for managing risks in the private sector and the factors that produce or impede effective decisions. The authors demonstrate that corporate culture is crucial in determining risk management. They analyse the transfer of corporate risk management systems from industrial to developing countries, and how globalization is spreading and creating new kinds of risk - the combination of traditional and modern hazards presented by climate change, technology transfer and economic growth. They describe the new priorities and capacities needed to deal with these enhanced vulnerabilities around the globe.

This book provides one of the first systematic accounts of how corporations manage risk to workers and consumers. Careful analysis and interviewing in different corporations elicit a portrait of the myriad hazards that currently confront industry, the corporate programs and resources that have emerged since 1970 to respond to this challenge, and factors that have contributed to successes and failures. In-depth studies of the Volvo Car Corporation, Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, Union Carbide's Bhopal facility, and large chemical and pharmaceutical corporations provide a state-of-the-art assessment of the advances and problems inherent today in industrial safety management. Roger E. Kasperson, Jeanne X. Kasperson, and Christoph Hohenemser are senior researchers at Clark University's Center for Technology, Environment, and Development (CENTED). Roger E. Kasperson is Director of CENTED and its Hazard Assessment Group. Jeanne X. Kasperson is Research Librarian at CENTED and Senior Research Associate in Brown University's World Hunger Program. Hohenemser, a professor of physics, directs the Environment, Technology, and Society Program at Clark University. Robert W. Kates, formerly with CENTED, is Director of the Alan Shawn Feinstein World Hunger Program at Brown University. Ola Svenson, of the Department of Psychology at Lund University in Sweden, is a leading researcher in the field of risk perception and decision analysis.

This book explores siting dilemmas - situations in which an "authority" (e.g., Congress, a consortium of utilities) deems it in the best interest of society to build a facility such as an incinerator, but opponents living near the proposed site thwart the plan. Facility developers typically attribute local opposition to selfishness or radically inaccurate views of the risks posed by the facility. We examine the validity of these conclusions by looking in depth at the psychological response that arises when residents are faced with the prospect of living near waste disposal facilities. The particular siting dilemma considered in this book is the problem of how to "dispose" of the high-level nuclear wastes accumulating at nuclear power plants in the United States. These wastes, in the form of "spent" fuel rods, will emit dangerous levels of radioactivity for thousands of years - anywhere between 10,000 and 100,000 years, depending on the margin of safety one adopts. The current proposal is to encase the spent fuel in corrosion-resistant canisters and then to bury these canisters deep underground in a geologic repository. The two of us became involved with the high-level waste issue in 1986 as part of an interdisciplinary research team hired by the State of Nevada. The charge of this team was to estimate the socioeconomic impacts that would accompany a repository if it were built at Yucca Mountain, approximately 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Cross-Cultural Risk Perception demonstrates the richness and wealth of theoretical insights and practical information that risk perception studies can offer to policy makers, risk experts, and interested parties. The book begins with an extended introduction summarizing the state of the art in risk perception research and core issues of cross-cultural comparisons. The main body of the book consists of four cross-cultural studies on public attitudes towards risk in different countries, including the United States, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Sweden, Bulgaria, Romania, Japan, and China. The last chapter critically discusses the main findings from these studies and proposes a framework for understanding and investigating cross-cultural risk perception. Finally, implications for communication, regulation and management are outlined. The two editors, sociologist Ortwin Renn (Center of Technology Assessment, Germany) and psychologist Bernd Rohrmann (University of Melbourne, Australia), have been engaged in risk research for the last three decades. They both have written extensively on this subject and provided new empirical and theoretical insights into the growing body of international risk perception research.

An examination of different theoretical, methodological and practical approaches towards the management of risk. Seven dimensions of the debate are identified, and the case for each position is put forward, the whole discussion being set in context and perspective. This volume attempts to identify and juxtapose the contested doctrines and underlying assumptions in the field of risk management.

Time is both the ally of high-level nuclear waste (HLNW) managers and the enemy. It is the ally because the radioactivity in elements and isotopes decreases with age, making the waste progressively less dangerous to human health and safety and the environment. This rate of radioactive decline varies, in some cases diminishing by half (the half life) in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years. In other cases the decay process takes centuries or hundreds of thousands of years before the wastes are safe for human contact. The problem as now conceptualized for HLNW managers is simple to state if not easy to achieve. The HLNW needs to be secured in some fashion until it decays, by virtue of its physical nature, to safe levels. Another possible future solution, not currently available, might be to change the ~~ructure of HLNW through high-technology processing and thus decompose the waste into units with different and less lengthy radioactivity. Learning whether this processing is a future option will require patience and generous amounts of time for research.